Paths
by PaintedFences
Summary: After three days in a future that isn't his own, Don struggles to adjust. Another look at SAINW - what happened while Don was there, and what happened after. Cover image by @Sassatello on Tumblr.
1. Chapter 1

When Don counts the time up, he was in that other place for three days.

He doesn't want to think of it, but he does, constantly. It's a dark river running under everything he sees, mirrored similarities in gestures, looks and words, one reality overlaying another.

Every time it happens it makes his heart seize and his stomach flip and his palms prickle with sweat, and it's stupid – and he feels stupid, and powerless, and weak and _scared_ – but it's physical, like a cold finger up his spine, like he's being fucked with. Like he's being _watched_.

Mikey with that frown he gets when he's thinking, Raph cleaning his sais with a slow, familiar sweep of cloth.

Draco didn't want to kill them. He wanted to take them apart, bit by bit. And how better to do it than to let him know he'll be the instrument of their destruction? That he'll be the one to fuck it up, but not how, or when.

Oh god, he's scared.

Donnie's coming to understand that he might not be okay. He might not be okay at all.

The light's so bright after the gloom of the chamber, the smell of blood is thick in his nostrils and he's aware his knees and hands are spattered with gore, but he launches himself at Mikey and Raph anyway, shaky and sweating but so relieved he can hardly speak, and he just gabbles some crap at them all, and Mikey's bemused, open face makes him _hurt_.

Then they're fighting again. When the adrenaline surge of battle peaks and everything around him stretches and slows and sharpens to hyper-realistic detail, he abruptly realises he is clean. Not a trace anywhere on him of blood or bone or grey matter when seconds ago he was soaked.

After the battle it's all prettymuch white noise to him. He takes it in, but it doesn't touch him. He looks for his bo, only to realise he lost it in that other place, and thinking about it laying where he dropped it on the floor of the dead Michelangelo's quarters, the room they shared with the sagging grey mattress and the damp seeping in from the walls and the sea of bottles and trash and fucking needles all over the floor makes his skin prickle. He remembers standing there, trying to keep his face expressionless, while that other Michelangelo laughed at him.

The goosebumps blend with the tingle and stomach-lurch of the portal, the feeling of your atoms being turned inside out, and then they are back in the lair.

'I hate that method of travel,' Splinter sighs, and his dark eyes move over them. 'You are all unharmed, my sons. Thank goodness.'

'Thanks to you, Sensei.' Leo bows, Splinter pats him on the shoulder and sighs again.

'Debrief in fifteen. Mikey, can you fix us something?' Leo is already moving toward the showers, and as Mikey fires off a little salute and starts toward the kitchen Casey stands up awkwardly.

'I, uh, I'll leave you guys to it. I guess you don't really feel like that monster movie marathon any more, huh?'

'Thanks bro.' Raph sounds about as tired as Don feels. Someone's tried to kill them again. Kind of a buzz-kill.

'I'll come by and see you tomorrow.'

Outside their lone functioning shower room Don leans against the wall.

He can't tell them. Ever. Lines have been drawn here that he can't see, and he knows, he knows with a certainty that's like a lead weight in his stomach, that if he puts one foot on the wrong track it'll spin them all off into the dark. All roads around him lead to a fifty-foot drop.

Raph slopes up the hall and comes to lean beside him with a sigh.

'Hey.'

'Hey.' It comes out wrong. He winces internally, even as Raph squints at him.

'You okay?'

'Yeah.' He injects more colour into the word – Raph's expression clears so it's enough to get him by, but then it's a moot point anyway because Mikey is skipping up the hall, pausing to pirouette to the bathroom door and rattle the knob, sing-songing 'Oh fearless lead-er! Don't forget to leave us some hot water!'

Don's stomach clenches painfully. He folds his arms and presses them into his middle – hard against the knot twisting there. He breathes slowly. He keeps his posture otherwise relaxed, and turns his face to his brothers.

'-yeah? Well you're not the only one who got a stadium full'a people screaming their name. We dominated!'

'Pfft. Did the grateful masses there actually give you a medal? Cause they actually _literally_ gave me a medal, bro-'

The door opens, and Leo steps out in a cloud of steam. As he moves to pass Don their eyes meet, Leo's clear blue and amused, having caught the tail end of the boasting, but then their look shifts into something like concern.

Don slips past Leo and shuts the door, locking it behind him. He ignores the quiet murmur of voices from the other side, purposefully blocking out any words which he can piece together into meaning – he'll deal with that later. He focuses on untying his belt and kneepads. It's harder than it should be, all of a sudden his hands are trembling, not cooperating - but he can ignore that, too.

When his fingers get to his mask they stutter and slip, and then it's like his body stops doing what he wants it to altogether and just for a second, just for a few seconds he sinks down to his knees, laying his head against the cool tile and trying to calm the too-loud beating of his heart, the twisting of his guts.

It's cool and quiet, the world shrunk to a comfortable distance. He breathes. He shoves the throng of images and voices back, and tries to empty his mind.

He killed them all. These brothers might be here, but the others died, they _all died_.

His throat burns, but he digs his nails into his palms and shoves it back, shoves it _down_.

Not now. Not here. He breathes hard, and forces his mind blank.

It's a minute or two before he realises he should have started showering by now. He knows it will seem odd. He needs to be quick, then. He gets up, shoving his mask off to join the rest on the floor, and steps into the tub and under the thundering of the hot, hot water.


	2. Chapter 2

When his skin is tingling with heat and he's soaped and rinsed twice, then three times, Don shuts off the water.

He wipes a clear streak in the steamed-up mirror and tries to look himself in the eye. Looking at his own stupid fucking face makes him cringe, a flutter of self-hatred that makes him feel sick in the pit of his stomach, and he drops his eyes. But then he scrubs his hands over his face, and tries again.

Better.

'Hello,' he says quietly into the mirror. 'Hi. Yes, good thanks. Thirty seconds. Yes.'

He follows up with a smile. Ugh, not good. And again? Passable.

He scrapes his belt, mask and pads off the floor, and a flicker of revulsion runs through him, no caked-on gore, just his mind trying to reconcile clean and not-clean at the same time. He'll throw them in the trash later.

(What he really wants to do is to toss them in the incinerator he built in the lab for medical waste and biohazards and crank it up until it obliterates them, but that would be crazy. So trash it is.)

He opens the bathroom door and Raph looks directly at him, right into his eyes like he's trying to look inside him too. It feels like a brick to the face, and Don feels a flare of anger – _Leo_ – but it crumbles to ashes even as he looks away.

'All yours,' he mutters, and heads off down the hallway.

Maybe he's the only one who notices these things. Maybe he sees it where the others don't, these little eddies of action and interaction that usually spell disaster, in one way or another, for him. He'd tried to explain it once to Leo, who'd looked at him with his brow furrowed, kind but not understanding, and put a hand on his shoulder.

'You're just… sensitive, Don. We get that.'

Heading for the kitchen, Don registers Mikey falling into step beside him. 'Ramen okay, bro? Sorry, it's stock-up day tomorrow.'

'Sounds good,' he says lightly, and then, because he can feel Mike is going to say something else, and he doesn't think he can talk, not yet, not naturally, he turns left instead of right, away from the bright glare of the kitchen toward his lab. He slips through the steel door and closes it behind him without locking.

Nonetheless, the feel of it at his back is comforting, as is the cleanness of the air-conditioned atmosphere, as is the dim light and the quiet, electronic hum – like sliding into a cool, dim pool.

The equipment – which in the end was useless, utterly useless – blinks quietly, and Don's heart lurches as his eyes come to rest on the incinerator, squat and unlovely between the counter where he sets bio samples to propagate and the medbay.

The lever is cold in his hand, it clanks as it opens its oily maw to him, and the wet thud the fabric makes as it hits metal makes him feel sick. The heavy metal door clangs shut, and he flicks the switch and then has to step back from the sudden, leaping of the flames.

 _Sensitive_. He doesn't want to be sensitive. He doesn't want to feel at all. He wants to batter things, smash it all to useless shit, throttle the scream buzzing to get out past his teeth, peel off his filthy feeling skin and throw it into the incinerator too–

'Don?' Leo is standing behind him. He realises he is breathing hard. Don forces his muscles to relax, and turns to Leo, who is looking uneasily from him, to the flickering furnace.

'Food's ready.'

Don smiles.

'Sure. Let's go.'


	3. Chapter 3

The wind felt hot and gritty in that other place, and everything smelled of something chemical, something like rubber or asphalt.

Mike grunted when Don asked about it. 'Environment's prettymuch fucked. It's fifteen degrees hotter than it should be. Awesome for roaches, not so much for anything else.'

Mike's mood had been black ever since April said she'd try to contact Raph and Leo, and for the two hours they'd been in the control room with April he hadn't spoken to or even looked at Don unless he had to. It stung a little, but Don noticed Mike wasn't talking to April either, or any of the members of her team who came in and out.

Mike ignored everyone and hung back to hug the wall, letting April run Don through what felt more and more like a post-mortem on this world.

The Shredder's operations were horrifying in terms of both scale and detail; work camps, mass disappearances, collapsed ecosystems, starvation.

She told him mutants could walk among the humans openly now, and then maybe because of something she saw in his face, April dropped her voice down low and told him some things a part of him had on some level always expected, things about fear and anger and exactly how careful he'd need to be around anyone outside of her people.

He ducked his head to scroll through some readouts, and then April put her hand on his arm. She was smiling sadly at him. 'Hey, it's okay. We have you now.'

Her face was all eyes, cheeks blades of bone under the sockets; there was no meat on her, on any of them.

'For what it's worth.' He tried not to sound as scared, or as incredibly, sickeningly out of his depth as he actually was. A thought beat insistently at the back of his mind: _Leo. Hang in there until Leo gets here._

April squeezed his arm gently. 'It's worth more than you know."

A soft scoff came from the wall. April sat up, and said briskly, 'It's late. Mike, can you take Don to get something to eat and fix him up somewhere to stay?'

'Sure thing, boss.' Despite the edge of sarcasm, Mike detached himself from the wall. April's mouth tightened, but after she'd hugged Don and told him she'd see him in the morning, she put a hand on Mike's shoulder and squeezed once. Mike didn't look at her, and as Don followed him out of the room, watching the tightness of his shoulders, something clicked into place; _he's ashamed_.

They passed through corridors with peeling brickwork painted an insipid yellow. The basement of an old school, then. Smart.

'In here.' Mike led Don to a long, low room filled with benches and tables. It was lit by two flickering fluorescent tubes, and mostly empty, bar one small, ragged group who stared at them without speaking. No one here looked particularly pleased to see him. Or Mike, come to think of it.

The back of Don's neck prickled uncomfortably, but Mike sagged into a chair and waved a hand toward where a series of battered serving dishes sat on a table.

'Get something while you can, the next shift's due in soon.'

'Aren't you eating?' Mike didn't answer, taking a small tin from inside his jacket pocket, and starting to roll a cigarette. When Don raised the metal cover, the food was scant portions of greying meat and a few shrivelled potatoes. Everyone here was so _thin_.

Even though Mike had four inches on him, broader shoulders and a bigger shell, his skin had a waxy pallor, and it hung loose over his bones, like he'd lost muscle. Standing there with the cover in his hand, Don was acutely aware of how he must look to everyone here, of how his body – until now just a part of him, nothing remarkable or even noticeable about it – was almost offensively plush, almost _gross_.

He took a cup of water and a small piece of bread back to the table, and felt a rush of guilt even at that.

'Something wrong with the food?' The bread was dry as old sponge; Don struggled to get enough moisture in his mouth to swallow, his heart fluttering in his chest. It was just so goddamn hard talking to this Mike.

'No. No, it's fine. I'm. I'm just…'

Mike raised an eye-ridge. Don paused, shut his eyes and opened them again, trying to focus his mind, his thoughts and emotions that darted and raced like minnows. He tried a small, sheepish smile, the one that always drew an answering smile from Mike, or Raph, or even Leo.

'I guess I'm not really hungry.'

'Huh.' Mike tapped the edge off his smoke. 'Then you're the first one in six months. Put it back then and let's go.'

'Put… but I've already…'

Mike's expression darkened. 'Put it back. If you won't eat it, someone else will.'

Skin burning, Don got to his feet, walked over to the table, and placed the piece of bread back where he'd got it. The other group were still watching him. From this angle, he could see two of the women were pregnant.

He didn't sit down again, instead stood by Mike, and tried to keep his voice even against surging anger. 'Are we going then?'

'Yeah.' Without looking at him, Mike ashed his rollup and tossed it into the garbage can in a wide, perfect arc, and the brief flash of the incredible gymnastic ability that drove Leo so utterly crazy stung Don like a slap.

'C'mon, I'm tired.' Don followed Mike out of the canteen, down another corridor. Mike didn't look tired, he looked _sick_.

He was pale and clammy, and his eyes were intense, distant. Don felt a surge of unease, and because he couldn't think of anything else to say, and because he felt the need, sudden and raw, to connect with Mike, in any way, any way at all, he asked, 'How come you're not the cook? You were always so good at it back– uh, back home.'

'They don't want me to be,' Mike said shortly, and then, 'You didn't bring anything, right? You need a bedroll.'

Mike led him through a grubby door to a small, stifling store room. As Mike rummaged, Don looked around, and immediately saw one wall was almost wholly taken up with a jerry-rigged fuse box. Wires hung like trailing vines; without even trying he could see four loose connections.

'This is the power for everything?' Don moved closer; it got worse and worse the more he looked – and was that seriously gum?

'Mike, this is dangerous. Really dangerous. Has April seen this?'

'Dunno if you noticed, dude, but April's busy.' Mike pulled a bundle from a low shelf and tossed it at Don, already turning away. 'C'mon.'

'Mike. Mikey-' stumbling over his brother's name, his brother who wasn't his brother, who was all wrong, wrong in ways he could barely put a name to, Don grabbed his shoulder, pulling Mike round to face him.'Can you just – can you please just look at me?'

Mike stared at him, teeth bared. Sweat was sheening his face; he was trembling. 'I'm looking. So, what? What do you want?'

'I don't…' Don tries to get the words out, aware he's wringing his hands, a bad habit, an old habit, from when they were kids and the water in the tunnels echoing stopped him sleeping, and sees Mike's eyes go to them. Don drops them in a slow, palms-out, palms-down motion, projecting a calm he doesn't feel.

'I feel like I don't know you at all. Mike, it's me.'

Mike's face twists; it's an ugly look. 'You 'feel like' you don't know me because you don't. I brought you here because in twenty seconds more they would have wasted you. Then April asked me to do this, so I'm doin' it.'

He laughs. 'I've never been a subtle kinda guy, but I guess I've got to spell it out. I. Don't. Want you here.' He spit a smile at him, and turned on his heel. 'Bro.'

Don followed him, because what else could he do, and two corridors over Mike pushed open a door into a room that looked like a maniac's cell.

'Make yourself at home.' The trash was ankle deep, drifts of it deeper in some places – bottles, cans, papers, wet fabric, smashed brick, a mouldy mattress, the crunch of glass underfoot.

It stank, of filth and piss and despair, and Don was blinking and blinking, heart thundering because until right now, until right this second he didn't understand that _no_ , he doesn't know this Mike, and he doesn't know this world, and he's a stupid, naïve little – Mike was laughing at him, at whatever his face was showing, perching on the edge of his mattress and pulling out – a med kit?

Don's mind tries to parse what he's seeing as Mike fills a syringe from a small clear bottle, pulls off the cap that covers the stub of his arm, the blunt nub of it shocking, and shoots it into the meat on the underside. Mike's already sinking back into the mattress, still chuckling, by the time Don has moved to grab him, too late, too late.

He slurs in a tone lazy with a golden, taffy-stretched high, 'Welcome back, brother of mine,' then harder, even as his eyes close and he goes boneless, 'Go an' fuck yourself Don.'


End file.
